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DOM MINASI SEPTET

“As you may remember, the last time we spoke the little girl needed help carrying all the notes that the Dom Minasi Quintet needed to record with.”

The follow-up to Dom Minasi’s dazzling recording from 2002, “The Bird The Girl and the Donkey II” showcases a septet of some of the planet’s most exuberant improvising free jazz creators.

The Dom Minasi Septet

Dom Minasi, guitar
Blaise Siwula, alto sax
Ras Moshe, tenor sax and flute
Remi Alvarez, tenor sax and flute
Matt Lavelle, trumpet and flugelhorn
Albey Balgochian, double bass
Jay Rosen, drums

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It’s not common to hear a guitarist mentioned in the same vein as adventurous players like Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor, but Dom Minasi is not your common type of guitarist. Like many highly creative artists, Dom needs a variety of contexts to express the full range of his musical vision by maintaining several separate groups.Born on March 6, 1943 (sharing a birthday with legendary guitarist Wes Montgomery), Dom is a 50-year veteran of the music scene, with a history and scope of activities as varied and jam-packed as his native New York City.Backing up top singing groups at rock ‘n’ roll shows, church dances and the like while still in his early teens, Dom has maintained a jazz trio with bass and drums since he was 15 years old. But education has also played a major role in his overall musical activities.“By the time I was 20, I had more than 100 students, but I cut it down to 95 so I could play six nights a week.”A lot of those nights were spent backing up, and providing musical direction for vocalists, something that Dom has continued to do since 1964 and almost exclusively until 1973, when his own trio began to really take shape, coming to the attention of George Butler who had taken the reins at Blue Note from the label’s visionary founder and producer, Alfred Lion.After recording two albums for Blue Note, When Joanna Loved Me and I Have The Feeling I’ve Been Here Before, Dom felt the business of Jazz was not for him So from 1976-1993, Dom involved himself in a variety of pursuits such as freelancing, recording dates as a sideman, and occasionally performing with the late, great pianist Dennis Moorman and his organ quartet featuring Dr. Lonnie Smith. Composing the music for a variety of off-Broadway shows, authoring three books for Sunrise Artistries, two books on jazz theory and chord substitution and one on improvising. Returning to school where he studied with Academy Award-winning (The Red Violin) composer John Corigliano at Lehman College, receiving his degree in composition in 1990.He also composed over 300 vocal and instrumental compositions during those years, as well as creating Literacy Through Songwriting Workshops for grades one through six for the New York City Board of Ed.Fellow musicians kept trying to get Dom more involved with the regular scene but he continued to resist. “I’m happy. I do my workshops with the kids. I’m doing great. Why do I need the aggravation?” was his general response. But finally in 1993 he began to take an interest again, becoming principal composer for the Manhattan Improvisational Chamber Ensemble (MICE) and began to work on various projects of his own. By1996, he was in the thick of it, but entirely on his own terms.That includes recording his own critically acclaimed album Finishing Touches and Dialing Privileges, co-led with Blaise Siwula & John Bollinger both for CIMP Records. Arranging all the music for the 1997 revival of Torch Song Trilogy; writing his fourth and fifth books The Singer’s Guide to Reading Rhythms and A Guitarist Ultimate Guide To Chord Construction and Substitution and publishing over one hundred new songs

 

 

Visit BlaiseSiwula.com

Read Getting To Know Ras Moshe

Read Remi Álvarez’s Wikipedia page

Visit MattLavelle.org or his Artist Page

Visit Albey Balgochian’s website

Visit Jay-Rosen.com

 

 

 

 

BIRD THE GIRL AND THE DONKEY II: DOM MINASI SEPTET (foUR7995)

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